"Gresham," Johnny suggested with a smile.

Polly cast a sidelong glance at the pretty cousin into whose family
she had been adopted. The subject of Gresham was a painful one; and
Johnny felt his blundering bluntness keenly.

"There isn't any Gresham," laughingly asserted Polly. "There never
was any Gresham. Let's go to Coney Island to-night."

Both Constance and Johnny gave Polly a silent but sincere vote of
thanks.

Willis Lofty, who continued the progressive fortune of his father by
prowling about the vast establishment with a microscopic eye,
approached Polly with more than a shopkeeper's alacrity.

"You promised to send for me to be your clerk the next time you came
in," he chided her.

"I didn't come in this time," she gaily returned. "Mr. Gamble is the
customer," and she introduced Constance and the two gentlemen. "Mr.
Gamble wants to buy a silk shawl for a blue-eyed mother with gray
wavy hair and baby-pink cheeks."

"There are a lot of pretty shawls here," Constance added, "but none
of them seems quite good enough for this kind of a mother."

Young Lofty, himself looking more like a brisk and natty college
youth who had come in to buy a gift for his own mother than the